Comments on: Limousin Society takes recording in-house

By: MP

MP — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 16:01:06 +0000

Seems logical to collect data from commercial breeders, but half the genes of every calf comes from its dam, and you’d have to wait for at least a couple of years to see if a bull’s daughters were easy-calving. The EBVs above a bull at a sale have more to do with his ancestors than the bull himself and don’t forget that the ‘E’ in EBV stands for ‘Estimated’. EBVs are essentially hi-tech educated guesswork with no guarantees, so figures should only come into a buyers’ decision, after his own visual assessment of the bull. A deep-chest or heavy-shoulder predicts calving problems no matter how good the calving ease figures are. A bull with good calving figures might turn out to be the genetic black sheep of the family and a cow-killer. If bulls from a particular breeder are consistently performing worse than their figures would indicate then this would suggest that the data is being manipulated, and it’s something the breed society should investigate in order to protect the integrity of its performance recording scheme.

By: ChB

ChB — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 07:11:36 +0000

You can fully understand why the breeders do what they do as well —- they’re paying into a scheme and if it can be used to tell customers that their product is good, easy calving, good growth rates, etc. Why on earth would you put data into it to make your animals less desirable to your customers. You may as well take a big sign to the bull sales saying ‘do not buy, this one is a bit sh1t’ and stick it above your pen.

The whole thing is a nonsense.

If a breed wants believable data they can trust, I agree with Tim — go collect data from someone who has zero vested interest in the outcome, i.e. the customers who have a crop or two of calves from their bulls. Do not collect data from breeders, just customers and within 5 years I would expect the accuracy of the figures to have improved dramatically.

By: tim speck

tim speck — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 20:51:24 +0000

i worked for a breeder who regularly requested me “to be flexible”in every herd record i submitted to the farm office,i knew he would go through them and “correct”them,particularly calving ease,this worried me bacause i often thought of some old boy buying what he thought a easy calving bull to end up pulling every other calf,if the lim society want to be responsible for there own performance recording then they will surely have to make the effort to police it,for a breed that regularly sells big money bulls why not offer a cash insentive to commercial breeders who supply calving ease records on purchased bulls across there commercial herds,if the purchaser has to pull more than a set per cent of his total herd then the breeder should have this flagged against his bulls in sale catologues.this along with continued temprament problems is why i stay clear of limmy bulls now.

By: SuperLimmy

SuperLimmy — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 18:25:50 +0000

I recorded my herd for almost 20 years before giving it up over a year ago. I was just fed up of trying to compete with dishonest breeders manipulating their own figures. At present it is far too easy to submit the wrong weights and calving scores. I know it would take a lot of money to police this but I don’t know what else could be done. Thats why when I’m buying a new bull a totally disregard all figures!

By: tim speck

tim speck — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 17:20:58 +0000

mooo,,think what you want ,jealous ? having worked with limmy,s for most of my 30 years working life i,m certainly not ignorant ,,i also have the conviction of my views to put my name to them unlike some/

By: 20 regal and a salad cream roll

20 regal and a salad cream roll — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 02:05:57 +0000

…the reason for this happening is so the farm managers that aren’t off cattle or sheep orientation can go to a bull or tup sale, buy a stock sire from the marketeers of the livestock industry and go back to their factors with the facts and figures to justify their over priced buy. I firmly believe the figures are far too easily manipulated by the profiteers with rashes and high dykes!

By: 20 regal and a salad cream roll

20 regal and a salad cream roll — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 01:44:26 +0000

To all you bloggers that are worrying about the figures, whether it be basco or breed plan, with all due respect, if the fraud squad were to get involved with any of the breeders or the associates of the afore mentioned, there would be a fair chance that the whole lot could probably go jail.

By: MP

MP — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 20:48:27 +0000

The Lim Soc could probably handle evaluations for all the breeds which are not with ABRI. It might even become the new Signet!! The number crunching will still be done by Egenes, so there won’t be much difference, except maybe in the cost of performance recording. It’s progress!

By: moooo

moooo — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 12:07:17 +0000

tim speck -

what an ignorant comment –
“you hope the breed implodes one day….”

what’s your problem – jealous.com?

By: tim speck

tim speck — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 22:02:03 +0000

yet further moves to insular limousin performance recording and move it even further away from outside scrutiny,this breed is going to implode one day(hopefuly)